If you've come this far, you're probably interested in how Progfreaks.com's reviews are written, or you just got completely lost. Either way, welcome to a brief explanation on the subject and the implications it has for you, the prog consumer.

First of all, let's start with the obvious; the grading system:

	Excellent (Steal it if you have to, but we won't bail you out!)
	Very good (Your girlfriend just broke up with you and the new guy is a heavyweight box champion? Buy this. It won't get you your girlfriend back, but you'll be all smiles soon)
	Good (It's not about to start World War III, but hey, this is supposed to be entertainment!)
	Regular (on the other hand, it makes for a great frisbee)
	Poor (This WILL get you your girlfriend back. As soon as you use it to cut that bastard into pieces)
None/dead frog	Britney Spears Award (The day this album was released was a sad day for mankind)

Now you may be wondering how exactly the staff at Progfreaks.com grades an album. Good question. While I can't speak for the others, I personally have a very strict way of evaluating and then grading an album; namely clicking on my computer's random number generator and dividing by two. Makes for great discussions with my colleagues.

Ok, witty humor aside, I do rely on a certain method in order to grade a record. First of all, I listen to it quite a few times, since, after all, this is progressive rock we're talking about, and it doesn't always sink in at first listen. After having thus absorbed the essence of the music and probably a couple thousand calories (God bless chips!) in the process, I give it one final listen while reading the lyrics and doing nothing of importance, in order not to get distracted. When my CD player stops, I write down a grade. It's simple, but it works.

Then it's on to the painstaking process of writing the review. It may be a breeze for some people out there (I'm pretty sure Javier just changes the name of the band and album...and even then he gets them wrong sometimes!), but I personally find reviews to be a demanding process because of one main reason: if the band went through such an effort to make an album, and you saved your hard-earned money for it, then I better make damn sure that I write a review worthy of both's troubles! Moreover, if the album sucks I have to write something that's deserving of my own! In other words, what you see is what you get at McDonald's today.

Sorry about that. I meant that every single review you read on Progfreaks.com is well thought-out, and that every single album has been thoroughly listened to before the review is placed on the website. Moreover, there are two reasons why Progfreaks.com's reviews have the potential of being useful to you. One, we're not a bunch of corporate overpaid decrepit hippies who do nothing but sit on their chairs and moan about how the world would be a better place if The Beatles were still around and acid was legalized everywhere. We're reviewing music we listen to, not getting paid for randomly attacking bands. Two, both reviewers at Progfreaks.com are musicians, so you won't get a bunch of theoretical nonsense from someone who doesn't have a clue. Moreover, I'm not about to start discussing how the substitution of a dominant chord for its diminished flat ninth was brilliant, so you won't be overwhelmed with theoretical terms and such.

That said, I have but one last comment. The music itself. Everyone has an opinion, and the staff at Progfreaks.com certainly does, but it may not be the same as yours. One of our failsafe methods consists of each one of us at Progfreaks.com giving every album a grade, so that you can identify with one of our opinions or base yourself on our general opinion of an album. But that's not perfect either, so it's up to you to listen to the song samples that you can usually check out at Amazon or CDNow and decide if we're right or not (or, like me, you can just go ahead and courageously buy the album without listening to any samples!). After all, like Frank Zappa once said:

"Writing about music is like dancing to describe architecture."

Thank you very much Frank!

-by Marcelo Silveyra